


A Total Eclipse of Something, All Right

by The Stephanois (ballantine)



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Gratuitous Use of Bonnie Tyler, M/M, Shopping Malls, food service
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-25
Updated: 2019-01-25
Packaged: 2019-10-16 01:41:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,721
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17540273
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ballantine/pseuds/The%20Stephanois
Summary: Steve is wiping down the back counter when Bonnie Tyler tells him to turn around.





	A Total Eclipse of Something, All Right

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is brought to you by the polar vortex.

Evening shift, the working life.

He was given the mandate to learn the value of a dollar, and was then told that _mandate_ means he has “no fucking choice, you're getting a job, Steven.” So he followed in the footsteps of generations of young, hungry men who came before him, and donned the uniform of a sailor. He can only hope he's up to the task ahead.

“Would you like sprinkles on that?”

The extremely solemn ten-year-old boy shakes his head. Steve tries to match his gravitas and hands him the cup of vanilla bean ice cream like he's passing along the Olympic torch. The kid's dad forks over a buck fifty and doesn't tip.

The afternoon crawls on.

“Hey, isn't that your ex?”

Steve glances up, tellingly fast. Nancy's passing through the food court, head up and walk like a stalk.

His first feeling is one of mild nausea and panic, because if Nancy's here and walking like that, there's probably a portal to the underworld in one of the photo booths outside Herbergers or something. His second, more reasoned feeling is that Nancy needs to chill and stop looking like she's come to do battle when everyone else is trying to have a good time.

Still, he doesn't hesitate – he whips off his hat and straightens his hair, then pretends he's busy with the crossword in the newspaper (he's really just been doing the word search). When he glances up casually a few seconds later, she's gone again.

He turns away from the newspaper and finds Robin working the straw of her shake and staring at him with raised eyebrows.

“Oh, shut up,” Steve says. He returns to his word search and I D I O T jumps off the page at him. Maybe all the letters aren't right beside each other in order, but they're there all the same.

“It's just,” she says ten minutes later, after serving up two double-scoop waffle cones and a cup of sherbet, “I don't see it. You and her.”

“Hey, Nancy's cool,” he says, automatically defensive and kind of resigned about it. He can just see it now, he'll probably be on his deathbed some day, defending the girl he dated as a teenager to his great-grandson.

“Uh, yeah,” Robin says slowly, like the clue bus came and went and he was still a block away from the stop. “But you're a dumbass. So how's that work?”

They smile sarcastically at each other. Bloodshed is only narrowly averted by the arrival of a mother with a screaming toddler. She orders an Irish chocolate shake.

“We, uh, don't have anything with alcohol in it,” Steve tells her.

It's not _strictly_ true; Dave the manager keeps a bottle of white rum in the cabinet below the display case. Robin, who'd gamely bent to grab it, stops at Steve's words and hovers awkwardly out of the customer's sight, bottle in hand. They have a brief, wordless argument.

“Fine,” the woman says, very much in the tone of _you want something done..._ “Just get me the shake.”

Robin puts the rum back, and Steve makes the woman a chocolate shake. A quarter and a dime are dropped into the tip jar, and then they are once more alone at their station.

They both look at the tip jar. Steve says, “I'll arm wrestle you for it.”

“Wanna have some of Dave's rum?” asks Robin, and Steve does, so they do.

–

Steve is wiping down the back counter when Bonnie Tyler tells him to turn around.

He does so slowly, carefully. He drags his gaze along the cream counter, past the the straws and napkins, and up to Robin, who has gone very still, framed against the fridge door she'd opened as the unmistakable piano intro started.

This is the fourth day in a row the mall has played Total Eclipse of the Heart.

She meets his eyes and mouths words about being tired. He tells her coaxingly to turn around. She's nervous. He tells her to turn around. Terrified. Turn around.

And maybe he and Robin should be partners in crime or the law or something, because the chorus hits and they go for broke, never mind maintaining workplace decorum or a safe and sanitary environment. Robin grabs a handful of straws and uses them as a mic. Steve swings a broom around like it's got a perfect hourglass figure.

The music builds.

It goes how it always does, with Bonnie – he's on his knees, he's got his head thrown back, he's giving it his fucking all as he belts out, “I don't know what to do, I'm always in the dark, we're living in a powder keg and _– Nancy._ ”

He ignores the disgusted look Robin gives him for ruining the best line of the song and gets to his feet. He approaches the counter, where Nancy is holding a folded five dollar bill and looking embarrassed. He guesses she didn't realize he worked here until she saw him down on the tiles.

It's not that he's embarrassed about singing Bonnie Tyler – lady's got a huskier voice than his baseball coach – but he could do without _I really need you tonight_ blasting overhead as he looks Nancy in the eye for the first time in two months. It's maybe the single most emotionally intense line ever uttered to a synthesizer in human history – it doesn't fit this wilted thing they have.

“Steve. Hey.” She smiles, and it's genuine, if awkward. “I didn't realize you – ”

“Yeah, new gig. Just, you know. Trying it out.” He watches her eyes flick over his shoulder and thinks that if Robin is still mouthing along to the song, he's going to kill her. “How about you?”

Nancy frowns. “How about me?”

“How are you doing?” This is excruciating, they're talking like old people. How could Nancy possibly be doing, she lives in a federal supernatural hazard zone and is dating Jonathan freaking Byers.

“Good, good.” She is still holding the five-dollar bill. They both seem to realize this at the same time and look at it like it's a lit fuse.

“You gonna – I mean, do you wanna – ”

“I'm good,” she says again, real quick, and puts the money away.

He folds his arms across his chest. “You sure? I don't mind.”

“Yes.” She gives him another small, close-mouthed smile and walks away, out of his day. Steve waits until she's out of view and then crumples down across the counter, lays his torso out like he's asking for ritual sacrifice, just do it already, _get it over with_.

“Always knew you were a drama queen, Harrington,” says a familiar voice.

Steve is in a Russian nesting doll of humiliation.

He straightens up. He can feel a grimace still contorting his face as he meets Billy's eyes.

“So it's true,” Billy says, casting a lingering look down the bright display case before bringing his gaze back to Steve. “King Steve's slinging ice cream.”

His wording makes Steve wonder if people are really gossiping about his part-time job. He knows Hawkins is small, but it's also got periodic infestations of carnivorous creatures of the night. It's just – priorities, people.

Steve braces himself on the counter. “If you'd like to try a sample, I have these little plastic spoons I can shove down your throat.”

Billy makes a noise of contempt. His eyes flick up and down Steve's face, as always a shade too intense to be normal. “Nice hat.”

“I think I pull it off,” agrees Steve, because he knows it's a stupid hat but like hell is he going to be shamed for it by Billy fucking Hargrove.

But then Billy asks, “You got a cigarette break coming up?” and Steve's mind jolts like a jumped clutch. Change of trajectory, new destination.

He covertly checks the rest of the shop. Robin is hacking robotically at a chocolate bar like it's a life sentence. There are no customers loitering anywhere near the station. Bonnie's telling him they can take it to the end of the line.

“I'm going on break,” he announces, hands going to the strings of his apron. He tries not to notice how Billy's gaze drops to his forearms and stays there. “Back in fifteen.”

He leaves quickly before Robin can protest.

They don't walk together, or even side-by-side; Steve goes first, heading down the long white hallway that branches just off the food court. He wedges open the service door at the end with a dustpan and leans against the cement wall outside, drumming fingers restlessly on his thighs.

Not even a minute later, Billy slips out after him.

This isn't, like, a _regular_ thing. It's only happened a few times, and they don't even kiss – well, Billy licked him once, but that doesn't count, Steve thinks. He'd been bleeding from a punch Billy himself threw, so it shouldn't count. It doesn't count. That'd be messed up.

Billy crowds up against him, eyes narrowed and fixed on his throat. He's got a cigarette in his mouth like they actually came out here to smoke. His mouth is very red.

“Why are you even doing this stupid job? Aren't your parents rich?”

Steve wonders if he should put his hands on Billy's hips, if that's allowed. He settles for reaching for his fly. “My old man's a dick.”

Billy purses his lips around the cigarette and nods like he understands. He still doesn't touch Steve. A few seconds pass, marked only by ash eating paper.

Steve pulls his hands away. “Look man, I've only got fifteen minutes, and I'd really like to spend that time doing literally anything besides talking about fucking ice cream, so – ”

Billy tosses the cigarette down and cups him in the same breath. Steve's words cut off with a swift intake of breath, head going back against the wall. It knocks his sailor hat askew and until then he'd forgotten he was still wearing it, Jesus _fuck_ –

He pulls it roughly off and throws it the way of Billy's cigarette. His whole body is strung tight, he's pushing into Billy's hand, obvious and wanting. There's something embarrassing about being so into this, and being out in the open – okay, in the corner of a disused service exit, but there's daylight above and fresh air all around and something about that makes him run even hotter.

Billy leans in and murmurs, “You're just gagging for it, aren't you, Harrington?”

It's like Pablo's dog or something – Billy has singlehandedly overwritten a lifetime of P.E. teachers barking out his last name in echoing gymnasiums. These days _Harrington_ is as likely to make Steve's dick twitch as to lead to running suicides and that's kind of fucked up, isn't it fucked up?

“Jesus, you talk too much,” is his breathless contribution. He knocks Billy's hand away and hurriedly undoes his own belt and fly.

Billy doesn't seem to mind; he reaches around to slip both hands under the loosened waistband and squeezes Steve's ass. Even just that feels good, weirdly good. Steve groans and pulls at Billy's shirt, dragging him closer.

But Billy resists. “Here, get this – ” and he's obviously just raring to go, can't even finish his sentences now, because he stops speaking entirely and reaches up, his breath hot on Steve's neck as he yanks at the neckerchief of his uniform. He tugs it around and pulls it up over Steve's face until it covers his nose and mouth.

“You got some fantasy about fucking a bandit or something?” Steve asks, nonplussed. He feels a little stupid standing here with his face covered and dick out.

“Just shut up, okay.” His hands pat Steve's shoulders, once, like he's checking them for structural soundness, and then he's sliding down to his knees.

This is. This is new.

Steve's gotten a blowjob before, of course. In his car, on his bed. One memorable time, on a pool chair at his house. But he's never had anyone go down on him in a rough cement alley, never had them look at his dick like it's something they wanted so bad, they didn't care where they did it, or how hard it was on their knees, whether there was trash collecting a few feet away in a wind-trapped corner.

He's never had anyone look at any part of him like that.

Billy moves over the head of his cock like he wants to breathe it in, like he's ruminating on its fucking bouquet the way Steve's seen people do at his parents' wine parties. But even Mrs. Foster the closet lush doesn't handle a bottle like this.

Billy opens his mouth and takes Steve in, flat of his tongue cradling the head. Steve shudders, knees trembling, and he gropes at the wall for balance. A noise is made, and it's impossible to tell if it came from him or Billy.

Steve sucks in air, gets impatient with the cloth over his face and tears it down; Billy happens to glance up with his mouth still locked deep around him. He meets Steve's eyes, and his own widen.

Steve doesn't last long. And Billy, he must have some grand sensory array that is attuned specifically to Steve's dick, because after swallowing he keeps licking up to the point where it's about to tip over into too sensitive, and then he stops. He stops and rests his forehead against the cut of Steve's pelvic bone, and he breathes.

“Do you need me to,” Steve starts, a little hoarse with sympathetic use, but he trails off when he notices – Billy's not hard anymore. The front of his jeans have gone soft, and he's moving like Steve feels, he's moving like he came.

Something about that makes Steve's mouth go dry. It makes him want to touch Billy more, now, even though it should be, like – show's over, everybody go home. It's because of this dreamlike line of thinking that he lifts his hand and buries it in the other boy's curls.

But they're not on the same wavelength.

Billy jerks back, hard enough to unbalance and land on his ass on the cement. They both freeze for a second, given away. Steve for reaching out, Billy for flinching.

Before he can say anything, Billy is scrambling to his feet and shrugging his shoulders like he's trying to fit better into his jacket. Steve can only stare at him.

“Get fucked, Harrington,” he says, but before Steve can make any kind of offer (sarcastic; interested; begging), Billy is knocking their shoulders hard together and swinging the door to the mall wide.

In the exposing gap of the door, Steve hastens to put his dick away. The door clicks slowly shut again. He checks his watch and nods to himself.

He doesn't know what to do. He's always in the dark.

–

“Ahoy,” Robin says when he walks back in.

“Ahoy,” he replies heavily. He slumps at the end of the counter and wishes vaguely that he had a cigarette.

“Why's your neckerchief on backwards?” Robin asks, tone extremely casual.

He mutters a curse and busies himself with straightening it out. Even takes his hat off to check that it's not covered in ash or dirt. He doesn't look over at Robin.

Two giggling girls come up to the counter and order: single scoop sugar cones, mint and strawberry. They each tip fifty cents from their little kid purses and for some reason that really gets Steve, just the pure-hearted innocence of it. He's carried cash since he was younger than them, and he doesn't think it ever occurred to him to tip his ice cream man.

“I don't really see it,” Robin says a couple minutes later. She has produced a magazine from somewhere and is now paging through it slowly, like every ad for eyeshadow requires intense study. But when he glances over at her, she's not looking at the magazine – she's looking at him.

“See what?” he asks.

“You and him,” she says, and then, as he feels his pulse start to petrify, she adds, “He's just so much hotter than you. So how's that work?”

After a moment, he exhales on a shaky laugh. He extends to her his middle finger; she returns one of her own. 

They wait the shift out.

 


End file.
